


In Sacrifice, Death

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 04:32:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: The Fade remembers.  It does not always remember rightly, but it remembers vividly.Right and wrong are the decisions of the observer.





	In Sacrifice, Death

I stopped at the watchtower looking over the Rift in the earth, a Blighted scar that would never heal.  “You can feel the terror,” I murmured.

_ “Darkness, tide of sin...Maker, he rises!”   _ The soft murmur came from behind me.  “Darkness lives here, has killed the land.  Everything fled, dead, gone.”

“Should we go?”  I turned from the Rift toward Cole and the tower standing pale and stolid against the sky.  It was harsh, as brutal as the sun and chill that filled the air.  A blasted, destroyed land that I  _ knew  _ had burst with life.  Life.  I needed life.  “Does the land remember?  Does the Fade remember?”

After Adamant, so many crushed bodies, the dark whispers of Nightmare in my mind,  _ Wardens  _ supporting a  _ Darkspawn,  _ I needed the life I would not find for weeks, unless dreams could hold it.  The only hope for something different was in dreams.

“Deep enough, the past remembers the future.”

Cullen’s arms had left with the rest of him and the bodies of those who believed in what I would never be.  An accident.  That’s all it was - an accident made possible by the Warden my sister had become.  They would never believe, even as the Anchor fizzled against my mana and pain skittered across my nerves again.  It was  _ elven  _ magic, even if it was ancient.  Ancient enough to help this time?  My dreams had been different, since my body had adapted.  I chose to believe it was adaptation rather than Solas’ Sominari meddling.  Surely he wouldn’t enter again.

Either way, Solas was far away.  “We camp here.”

**

In the wavering world of the Beyond, the past veiled itself with memory.  Deshanna said that, that the Fade would show you what you wanted or what you feared.  It did not care, spirits drawn b what had occurred and what was invoked from your own heart.  I walked across fields of poppies, dark grass and trees reaching for the sky.  Rolling hills where I could see rocks brought up from the spring thaw.  I let my fingers brush the crimson petals bold against dark grass under the moonlight.

My fingers came back moist.  Dew...until I realized the petals vanished where I’d touched, the grass blackened, the rocky hills resolved into corpses piled high, armor making irregular shapes against the starshaped night.

Not night.  No, it was night in my mind, but the color was drained from the world around, drawn into the air, the crack forming beyond the tower, shaking against the past.  Grey, bone, and crimson were all that darkened the Blighted coal of Darkspawn.  A rib pressed against what had been a dwarf’s Branded cheek, blood dripping into petals of sacrifice.

_ ‘Maker, he rises.’   _ The voice cracked, parched with agony.   _ ‘There is no warning.’   _ A second tower formed from the edge of the Rift, widening from crack to chasm.  

A creature from beyond the nightmare Haven had become tore the sky.  Clawed forearms followed a spiked head, scales twisted and misshaped,bone showing beyond the black and crimson.  This was an Archdemon, I remembered.  Memory shaped the horror imprinting this place as wings rose and it roared, smelling for magic, for life, for what it hated.  The trees were skeletons of themselves and ogres.  None survived the battle, and then I tasted bile.  Movement.

Twisted.

Dark.

_ Familiar. _

Her robes were torn, stained with what should have been crimson for the first time.  Dark eyes were silenced as her beautiful chocolate skin peeled and with a composed half-smile, Vivienne stepped back, falling into the Void below the tear in the world.

_ ‘Falling.  Lost.  Found.  The music…’   _ Pale skin and hair like mine corrupted to leprosy as daggers were pulled from an unmoving form, pointed ears all that showed beyond the wreckage.  I fought, trapped within the blood soaked too far for roots to drink and my own nightmares.  Chill wind stole my whispered protest.

No.   _ “No.  Cole…” _

_ ‘I was like you.  I will be again.’ _

“No!  Cole, you won’t be!  You care!”  My words fell flat.  Nothing I did mattered.  Who was I?  No hero, like Vidira had become.  No holy warrior, no certain guide.  Instead, what had I done?  Destroyed what I touched.  The Templars, I did not regret.  The Chantry that attacked the People, I couldn’t.  The  _ Wardens?   _ They had done this!   _ They had fallen to their need to sacrifice.   _ Who was next? Who was left?    _ ‘She will lead the People into ruin.’   _

_ “NO!!” _

Green shattered the Beyond, the Veil that housed the spirits trapped to corrupt like the land.  Whatever life it remembered here was not life.  The flowers were splashes of blood, it tore the world.  


End file.
